Parahexavoctal posted:

Her name was Kasey Watss -- pronounced 'KAH-tseh', and with one T and two S's. And in the end, I don't know if she was ever even real.

There's a song at the end, but you'll appreciate it more if you read the story first.

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I know - believe me, I know - that not all the sob stories people tell online are true. But sometimes, when someone starts telling you about their sad life, it's easier to just go along with the story: if it's true, then you're providing a shoulder for someone to cry on, and if it's not, then what are you really losing? Until they ask you to participate in an international bank transaction, of course.

I first met Kasey on IRC in 2003 or so. She -- or the person claiming to be her, anyway; from now on, whenever I mention something about Kasey's life, consider the "or so the person claimed" to be implicit -- was from Poland (or had an ident that ended in .pl, anyway... or maybe it was an IP address that resolved to a Polish city? All I remember is that I felt it was reasonably conclusive, but it could have been faked). Every couple of days, we chatted about various things, and over the weeks and months that passed, she told me about her life. It was very, very sad; she'd been born in the UK, but raised in Poland by relatives, and... well, I'm not going to tell you most of the details of her life, because if they were true, then sharing them with you guys would be a huge violation. And if they were just bullshit that somebody made up to string along the weirdo on IRC, then there's no point. If she was real, though, then ... based on what she told me about her life... I don't see any way that she wouldn't be dead by now.

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One of the positive things in Kasey's life was her music. She had a synthesizer, and composed/improvised/programmed a bunch of songs. At this point, I'll have to ask you to bear with me if I get the terminology wrong: I'm not an expert in this, it was >10 years ago, the chat logs are long gone, Kasey's translation into English may not have been exact... and, of course, the whole thing might have been bullshit anyway. But the songs were real: I asked if I could listen to her work, and she DCC'd me her self-declared best ("Time Walks Away") in .mid format. I was on a Mac in those days, and as I recall (vaguely), iTunes refused to handle MIDI. I was able to open it them in Safari, though, and I concluded that it was pretty good. I told her this, and she seemed pleased. Later, I e-mailed the .mid to a relative so that he could convert it into .mp3 for me (today, I know that there are ways to do it myself); this was a good thing, because it meant that I was later able to recover the file from my sentmail. I asked her if I could listen to any more of her music, and she sent me others which she warned weren't as good, and some which she said were unfinished but she hoped I liked them. They were okay.

I gave Kasey some suggestions about ways she could try to improve her unfortunate life. And she tried, and things might have been looking up for her. And then her best friend OD'd, and Kasey wrecked most of her own stuff in a fit of rage. Deleted the music, too (or maybe wrecked the drive they were saved on? I don't remember). Later, she asked me if I could give her back copies of the MIDIs she'd given me; the only one I still had at that point was the aforementioned "Time Walks Away".

A few weeks after that, she had (with my encouragement) applied for a new job, and was starting work soon (I think it was McDonald's or similar, but I'm not positive). And she told me that things were finally starting to go well for her, and as an added bonus, a Polish electro/synthpop group she liked was doing a show in a club near her. And I told her, good, go enjoy the show, I hope you have a great time!

The next day, she told me that she'd gone to the show, and it had been wonderful. And she'd gone to the afterparty, and she'd even been lucky enough to talk to the singer, and he'd invited her to have coffee with him that evening!

I told her, aww, that sounds nice, I hope you have a nice time, I hope he's nice to you.

She was so excited.

I never heard from her again.

A month and a half later, I was starting to worry about her. I went to the group's site, and checked - the show in question had been real. I found an e-mail for the singer, and I wrote to him. "This is kind of weird," I told him, "but... remember your show about six weeks back? There was a blonde woman at the afterparty, you asked her to have coffee with you? Did she show up? Have you heard from her since then? Is she okay?"

He wrote back:

"I don't drink coffee."

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So. The easy answer is that this was all bullshit, that someone was stringing me along. And to be honest, that's actually the ending I'd prefer, because if my friend Kasey wasn't real, then her suffering wasn't real either. But (leaving aside the question of whether she had literally meant 'he invited me to drink coffee with him ') there's still the music. I can't accept that someone would have made "Time Walks Away" just to convince me that Kasey Watss was real. Maybe TWA was taken from somewhere else, of course, but then why include less-good songs as well? Why include unfinished songs? Why send them in .mid instead of in .mp3?

If I'd been wasting a con artist's time -- she never once asked me for money, or for my physical address or bank account details or anything like that -- why would they bother trying to give "Kasey" a happy ending? If someone was an rear end in a top hat enough to do this whole thing as a prank, why wouldn't they also try to rub my face in it?

I'm including Kasey's song here. Maybe you'll recognize it as a renamed tune from the demo version of some composition software, or an adaptation of a selection from a JRPG soundtrack, or... whatever (in which case, please let me know).

But maybe you won't.

I still think of this as Kasey's song. Even if she wasn't real, it's still pretty good. And... if she was real... then, for as long as people listen to it... she'll still have mattered.

Free MP3 download: Time_Walks_Away.mp3